Life of a semi feral equestrian attempting to learn dressage with her Arabians. Humor, science, and doing things in a roundabout way.

Friday, November 29, 2013

A Black Friday

No, I didn't go out into all the black Friday shopping madness. To be fair though, I did go ahead and order some things online. Terrible I know. Just wait until the packages start showing up at the house on what the husband says then!

I had a doctor's appointment this morning. Should have been fairly straight forward in evaluating my back injury, doing paperwork and so forth to bring to my lawyer handling my workman's compensation case. However, in the midst of answering basic questions on how I was doing and feeling, the doctor stopped, looked at my MRI again, and left the room to go speak to radiology.

He came back, complete with a medical student (resident?) to show her some of his findings. Cool, I always love being interesting enough for more than one person to take notice.

But what he thinks he found upon evaluating my MRI again is a cyst in my spinal cord. Not exactly good news.

So now, I get the process of trying to figure out which insurance will cover an additional MRI with contrast to see if the cyst is still there and more MRI to image my neck/skull as he thinks I may have Chiari's, upon examining more of my past history.

I have to be honest, I am usually a pretty cool person, but this is a little unnerving to me. My husband worries a lot, so I told him a bit of what the doctor said, but not the full ramifications if it is Chiari's. I'm hoping it's just an artifact in the imaging or something easy and then I'll just be able to go on my merry way.

Definitely one of those days where I needed a little horse therapy, after trying to wrap my head around this afternoon. I went ahead and rode the semi feral mare who was pretty good. Thankfully not so goofy, which is good. We even had quite a few more good trot circles to the left. The cantering to the left was not so good and I need to make a mental note to work more on transitions the next time. Or should I say, more work on the half halting into the transitions.

I then lunged the little red filly tonight too. I should go ahead and get her driving stuff back out and work on driving her again, but sometimes it's just easier to lunge and go. But I did put down trot poles and she did those easily. I put up cavaletti and she was lazy, lazy. How are you so lazy horse? She is bred pretty "hot" in terms of having a lot of park/English pleasure horses in her pedigree, but she just wanted to jog along. Hah, I look forward to seeing what she's like under saddle. Silly filly.

So here's to hoping that my Black Friday really wasn't so bad after all. We all have bumps in the road, so I suppose I'll just keep going down that road.

I know before we have "the answer" more physicians will be involved. But I am grateful to be in part of the university system with some of the best physicians in the state. I would trust them in a crisis for my critters, so I suppose I will get a turn as we search for answers.

But they are a good salve for worries. Amazing how just being in the barn removes so many anxieties and fears.